Lucky's No Sew Tutu

One day, as I was getting dressed, Lucky and I had the following conversation:
"Mommy is wearing a tutu!" (I was putting on yoga pants)
"Noooooo, [Lucky], Mommy is not wearing a tutu."
"IIIIIIIII need a tutu."
"Would you like Mommy to make you a tutu?"
"OKAY!"

I credit Daniel Tiger with Lucky's tutu request but I was more than happy to try to make my boy something. This is one of the first items he ever requested!  I'm not just happy, I was ecstatic!  A few days later Lucky and Mommy (and Daddy and Rowdy) went to the fabric store to buy some tulle to make a tutu for Lucky.  Since this was his custom tutu I wanted him to pick out the colors.

I really thought we would leave with one color (most likely orange) but Lucky picked out purple, blue and pink fabrics.  I think a multicolored tutu will be stunning!  I bought 1.5 yards of purple, and 0.5 yards of each of the blue and pink.

Shortly after getting home it was bedtime for Lucky and Mommy and Daddy wanted to watch Star Wars so I didn't make the tutu.  The next morning, I asked Lucky if he wanted to wear clothes or stay in his PJ's for a pajama party day.  "I want to wear my TUTU!"  Uhoh, Mommy had better get on this during naptime!

This is a no sew tutu, I plan on just tieing strips onto ribbon.  The ribbon I'm using is a shiny wire ribbon leftover from a Christmas Basket.  The ribbon was part of a box of leftover wrapping paper that Lucky has been playing in since Christmas Eve... and it is now April! (Seriously, a box of wrapping paper is a great activity for a 2 year old!  Lucky likes to "swim" and hide in it.)  He likes to drape these ribbons over his head like a necklace and pretend to be an alligator.  I don't think he'll mind if I re-purpose one of the ribbons in his tutu.

The tulle is around 54" wide.  My 3 ft tall 2 year old doesn't need a 2 ft long tutu, so I cut the fabric in half width wise before cutting the strips.

I folded the fabric in half again (so 4 layers thick with the pink shown) and cut approximate 2" strips.  I did the same with the blue fabric.  With the purple I cut 2.5-3" strips of fabric and I cut through 8 pieces of fabric at a time to speed things up.  The strips didn't have to be perfect since there will be so many bunched together no one will notice.

For each knot, fold the fabric in half and pull the ends through the loop like you would fringe.  I held two pieces of purple and two strips of either pink or blue for each knot, alternating the pink and blue sections.

In the end I only ended up with two purple strips left over!  Way to go, Mama, you finished up a tutu during nap time!  There will be one happy Lucky boy coming downstairs after nap!

I can use this skirt to approximate how much fabric I'd need to make myself a skirt someday.  I won't need to guesstimate the amount of tulle to purchase if I can start by measuring this around myself.  If I were going to make a tutu for myself I would have made wider strips and not cut the length in half.  Oooo, maybe used a long braid of tulle instead of the ribbon to tie the fabric onto.

Shopping aside, this whole project took me less than an hour to complete.  I love the way it turned out!  Layering the colors really made the skirt rich and vibrant.  (If you've watched my yarn dyeing videos then you know I love depth of color!)

It took Lucky too long to wake up from his nap, so Rowdy tested it out.  Oh my was this adorable!

I knew that even if Lucky only wore the tutu for 2 minutes it would be worth the effort.

At $1.99/yard and with a discount coupon this was a cheap project to my my boy happy.  Plus it is a great addition to our dress up box!   I haven't been able to use my sewing machine in a while.  Maybe next time I'll make a "proper" gathered tutu.

It turns out that Lucky was initially a little unhappy to see his alligator "costume" in the tutu but thankfully he got over it.  The day we created the tutu he only wore it for about 2 songs of dancing, but since then he has requested to put it on on other occasions.  He was so happy that I made this for him!

Project started and completed 4/6/2016

Puerperium Cardigan for Boogaloo

I finally finished Lucky's Frozen sweater with less than month until the due date.  Because I was conservative with my yarn purchase I have enough left over to make a sweater for Boogaloo, too.  I can make a little newborn sweater so our boys can have some matching sweater snuggles shortly after Boogaloo is born.

My gauge from the frozen sweater on size 6 needles is close to what I need for the Puerperium Cardigan, too.  Wahoo!  I don't need to swatch again since I'm using the identical needles and yarn as with the frozen sweater.

The project is going super fast.  The different rows are easy to keep track of and without any cables or anything there is not a lot of attention that needs to be paid to the pattern.

I finished the small ball of yarn and started Ball 2 near the beginning of round 21.  For some reason I counted 142 not 140 sts after round 24.  Ugh, but I"m not going to worry about it too much.  There are 29 stitches on each sleeve and only 4 stitches for each edge so I'm not too concerned.  Huh... after Row 29 there are 164 sts just as there should be in the pattern.  I counted three times previously so I'm not sure what I did to get the wrong number!  I'm glad that it is working out, though.

Right before the 7th button hole (before I presumably start the edging part C) the underarm measures 12.75 cm. Wow I'm right on target with the way these pictures of other projects are!

Now that the body is finished I have a new decision to make.  Long straight sleeves, long tapered sleeves or short sleeves?  I still have 7.1 g of the original dye lot left so I have plenty of yarn for any of the options.  I have some plain long sleeve onesies (in both NB and 3 month sizes) so the short sleeved sweater could be super cute on Mr. Boogaloo.  Plus this would be significantly faster to complete.  I'm not sure how well I'd like the long sleeves on my baby and not knowing how he is proportioned I think I'll stick with short sleeves.

Rather than doing a magic loop, I switched to DPN's for the sleeves.  Knit one round with picked up stitches.  P, K, P, K and then bind off p-wise for consistancy with the rest of the borders.  The sweater needs blocking.  Light blocking, but it is still required to prevent any curling.  So I could mark the project as "completed" sooner on Ravelry (and check something off of my HUGE LIST before the baby arrives) I decided to sew the buttons on first and then block it with the buttons closed.

I wanted to use ladybug buttons for this sweater as Boogaloo was due in February.  I had two different packages of similar buttons, one that I purchased (left) and one that Grandmama picked up for me (right).

I selected Grandmama's buttons over my own because sewing through two holes is much easier on knitting than sewing through one.  I'm not sure what you call a button with a  hole on the back post only, but they make me so frustrated when applying them to knitting.  2-4 holes is much easier to manage.

I added the buttons to the top and bottom of the sweater first, and then the middle to help with spacing.  I think these lady bugs look rather cute marching up the unblocked sweater.

After some really light blocking the sweater was complete and ready for my baby boy to arrive.

Baby Boogaloo (aka "Rowdy") showed up in January, not February as expected but he is still my little Love Bug.

Isn't he darling wearing a coordinated sweater with his big brother, Lucky?  I feel so blessed to have these wonderful boys in my life!  

Last Minute Star Wars Costumes

I am one of the lesser Star War fans in my cohort but I love coming up with costumes.  Last fall not only were we excited for Episode VII but my friends had a Life Day Party and requested everyone dress in Star Wars costumes.

Lucky's costume was easy because he had many choices.  He had many different Star Wars PJ's and he had an R2D2 hoodie.  Keith and I needed to get a little more creative as we didn't have anything that would work with zero effort.  

Darth Vader's Cape

Keith already had a "Who's your daddy?" tshirt and Darth Vader mask, so we just needed a cape. (In the picture above he is also featuring a light saber pen!) I took a cheap plastic table cloth (54"x108") left over from Lucky's Birthday Party and chopped off the bottom so the length would just hit the floor.  On my sewing machine, I made the stitch length as long as possible and raised the tension as high as possible to ruffle the cape.

Unfortunately that did not ruffle the top as much as I'd hoped.  I lowered the tension and stitch length to normal levels, and created a tie for the top of the cape.  I folded a 4" wide piece into thirds and stitched down the middle.  It isn't neat, it isn't perfect. but it is a bit stronger.

Finally, I gathered the cape by hand pinning it in place with this tie folded in half over the cape.  I didn't have the tie centered well but this was a FAST FAST last minute costume.

Voila!  The cape is done.

Cue the Imperial March!

A Death Star Maternity Shirt

When I was figuring out my own costume, I wanted to take advantage of my big baby bump.  Star Wars has a pregnant character, Padme, but she dies in childbirth!  That wouldn't be a fun way to dress up!  I had an old Maternity shirt from when I was pregnant with Lucky and decided to create a death star on the belly.  This would work both for this party and to wear to the movie!

That's no moon!

First I sketched out a rough circle around where I wanted the death star to end up.

With fabric paint I started drawing outlines of the shapes I found in some death star cartoons.  

Finally I filled in the shapes with a light zig zag of the silver fabric paint.   I needed this to be dry by the next night so I didn't want to goop on the paint too high.  Isn't she beautiful?  

I wish that I had drawn the belly a little lower on the shirt... but overall I thought it was a great attempt!  Plus it was dry just in time for the party.  (I'm super glad no one made jokes about making my belly explode!)

Unfortunately our Darth Vader mask is currently missing.  I think Lucky would really like playing with it now, too.  Where oh where could it be?

Kettle Dyeing Braided Roving

Time for a new dyeing video, yay!

It really warms my heart how excited my followers get when I share pictures of my filming setup.  They are excited because it means that a new video is (finally!) in the works.  

With two small children it can be hard to produce videos quickly.  I can get multiple experiments started in an afternoon but I'm frequently limited to what I can fit it around nap schedules.  Then I have to wait for the fiber to dry (which can take a few days) and edit the video.  Last winter I was still working on my old laptop so it would take HOURS to export the final video.  (As I'm writing this post in March I'm crossing my fingers that my new computer will help speed up some of these issues.)  I filmed the following video back when I was still pregnant and Rowdy was 2 months old when I finally had the chance to sit down and edit this video.    

Enough babbling... onto my new favorite roving dyeing technique!  When I overdyed some previously dyed roving I kept it in a crocheted chain (which I sometimes call a braid).  I think that this gave me some fun variation of color, so I wanted to test this out by kettle dyeing starting with a dry crochet chain of yarn.

Here it is!  Check out what happened when I kettle dyed a braided crochet chain of roving:

Video Contents:

• [0:00] Introduction and crocheting the roving
• [2:37] Making the dyebath
• [4:52] Adding the fiber
• [7:16] 20 minutes later
• [7:56] Removing Fiber from the dyebath
• [8:56] Washing the fiber
• [9:40] Reveal of the finished fiber and conclusions

The kettle dyeing is following the same protocol I've used dozens of times now.  Make dyebath, bring to boil, reduce heat and add dry fiber.  The only difference is that we're starting off with a dry braid so some regions of the fiber will be more accessible to the dyebath than other parts.

Next time I want to try doing this with Wilton's Violet to see if I can get some colors to break.  Or maybe even dip dyeing the braid... I have so many ideas here!  Tell me what you'd like to see in my next video in the comments.